Title: Final Fantasy Type-0 (ファイナルファンタジー零式)Console: PSPGenre: Action RPGLanguage: JapaneseCompany: Square EnixSummary: First off the bat, this title renews my faith in the Final Fantasy series a bit, since lately I’d been somewhat unimpressed compared with the hype. This title actually follows through with the hype for the most part.

Finished my 2nd playthrough. I must suck since I didn’t get the alternate ending even though I picked the 2nd choice for all those creepy red screens, so I ended up just watching it on Tudou. >_> Will probably end up creeping slowly around my 3rd playthrough with a guide to get all the side junk I missed. Thank goodness just about everything carries over.Story:Characters:When I played the demo, I couldn’t stand playing anyone except Ace in the end. Supposedly they improved camera functions and some other things in this release, so we’ll see how things go. Still, I will not be surprised if I steady with Ace ANYWAY for Kajikaji… XD;

Done some light exploring with the other characters. I definitely prefer the range characters (Ace, King, Deuce, Trey etc) over the pure melee. If I stick with melee, I like Jack’s style, just not his speed and dodging much.

Graphics:Sound:Gameplay:Replay Value: Some reviewers even go as far to say that the first playthrough should be seen as the first half of the full gaming experience, while the second playthrough becomes the second half. While I wouldn’t say it’s THAT wonderful, the extra content in the second playthrough is rather generous. More laterOverall: 10. Actually, this comes VERY close to a 9 for me when I consider the price of the game and the slightttt hype disappointment I got when I heard it would be on 2 UMDs.
Other disappointment points would be the final boss battle and wanting even MORE cutscene loveliness to reach the level of depth with the characters that this title could have potentially and frankly, quite EASILY achieved. (Level-5 has spoiled me)

Still, in relation to PSP RPGs, and in relation to the Final Fantasy series, it’s an excellent title. I think this is also the best gameplay experience I’ve had for an FF game.

And the CAST is the best ever in FF. God they should just make a CG movie out of this. It’d be over 9000x more entertaining than Advent Children.

If you yourself have lost faith in the FF name or Japanese RPG genre, don’t miss out on this one. Maybe in the end for me, turn-based quickly turns repetitive for me, while action still leaves good challenges. And even for an action RPG, Squenix has disappointed me with their Kingdom Hearts series multiple times already (also disappointed with what they’ve done to the Seiken Densetsu series after the SNES generation). Crisis Core was decent, but Type-0 blows Crisis Core out of the water.

If I get the time, I’ll expand the other sections, but just leaving this as a disorganized ramble for now.